Clark Wolf is the host and organizer. The panel—on food and politics—includes me, talking about my memoir, Slow Cooked, An Unexpected Life in Food Politics; Chloe Sorvino, author of Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat; Alex Prud’homme, author of Dinner With The President: Food, Politics and the History of Breaking Bread at the White House; and Tanya Holland, author of Tanya Holland’s California Soul. Free, but register here. It starts at 5:00 p.m. and lasts one hour.
by Marion Nestle
Sep
25
2008
How much melamine is harmful?
The European Food Standards Agency has done some calculations. It says the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) is 0.5 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) body weight. This means that for a young child weighing 10 kilograms (22 pounds), it would only take five of those candies mentioned in the previous post to hit the TDI.
But the Agency also says that Chinese infant formula contained as much as 2500 mg of melamine per kg. Let’s assume that a scoop of formula weighs 10 grams and contains 25 mg melamine. If a child has several feedings a day, this amount of melamine could easily exceed the TDI and, apparently, did. And remember: if cyanuric acid is present, kidney crystals can form at even lower doses.